Coffee heat rising

Urban life

Uhm…Progress made: Ella’s Story

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Yup. That’s it. The extent of what little progress has been made today is the posting of yet another episode in the ongoing Ella’s story.

“Sure. Because we’re all fairies…”

You understand: I haven’t written any more of it, as I had planned to do today. Probably will not get any more of it written today, since I haven’t accomplished all of today’s Basic Survival Tasks. The computer, the crazies, and Fate have conspired there-against.

Today I do not seem to be able to do anything right. Or, according to my theory, the Damned Computer WILL not do anything right. What should have been a simple chore devolved into half an afternoon’s uphill climb.

I hate computers. I want my horse back.

Horses may not be as smart as computers, but they do have this redeeming quality:

Make my day, human!

Fuck up on a horse, and she’ll throw you on your head and after that you will never have to think about anything again.

Life? You think you should have a life, human?

Fuck up on a computer, and you’ll spend half your goddamn lifetime FIXING IT!

But no little annoyance related to either compares to the infinite annoyance of driving on the homicidal streets of the City of Phoenix.

I swear to GOD these people are fucking lunatics. We live in a city entirely populated by fucking lunatics.

Admit it: this is a more rational explanation than my theory that selected morons and lunatics have radar chips implanted in their brains to alert them every time I get in my car, so they can all swarm out onto the roads. Does it not make more sense that they are always on the roads, at all times of the day and night, than that they all make special trips out to chase me around every time I run an errand?

The high point of today’s WackSh!ttery was a fulminating case of road rage that forced me to dodge off a main drag into a…oh hell…just so fuckin ridiculous.

I’m cruising toward Costco, where I’ve GOTTA fill up the gas tank, like…right now. Westward bound on Glendale, a seven-lane main drag. Ahead of me are two sh!theads playing catch-me-if-you-can. The guy in front, a blue car, seems to be moving along. He’s being tailgated by a guy in a red car. Red Car suddenly darts into the two-way left-turn lane, FLOORS it, kicks up a cloud of road dust as he roars past the guy in the blue car, swerves back into the traffic lane, and JAMS on his brakes.

I jam on my brakes and miss rear-ending the guy in the blue car, who apparently is expecting this because he misses the red  car.

Red Car A**hat brings the traffic in the fast lane to a near stop. Expecting a fist-fight at best and an exchange of  bullets at worst, I figure to get away from them by jerking south (left turn) onto Seventh Ave. Signalling, I move into the left-turn lane.

Blue Car, apparently trying to get away from Red Car A**hat, swerves in front of me, cutting me off in the left lane. Red Car, watching this instead of the road ahead, darts in front of him and jams on his brakes again.

Seeing this coming, I floor it and FLY back into the fast lane, now cutting off the guy who was running behind me and apparently not paying a lot of attention to our little drama.

He misses rear-ending me, for which I am thankful.

I now have missed my turn to go south. So turn south on 15th.

Fifteenth Avenue is a minor main drag — a very major feeder street for an endless series of housing developments that spread westward from Central Avenue. In the past it moved smoothly enough except for a few stop signs and the occasional irrelevant traffic signal. But the idiot city has decided that it would enhance “safety” to fuck up the traffic flow on this lengthy road, which extends from Dunlap all the way down to the State Capitol, a very, very long way. To that end, they have installed a brain-banging series of speed humps and roundabouts.

Phoenix drivers, being the wooly-brained sheeple that they are, cannot figure out that you do NOT need to slow down for the inane, shallow speed humps. Maintain a steady speed of about 30 mph and you can cruise right over the damned infuriating things with no damage to you, your car, your bystanders. Naturally, I get behind one of Phoenix’s Dumbest. He putters along, then JAMS on his brakes every time he approaches one of these tiny speed humps, then speeds up again. And as for the roundabout? By that, he was so flummoxed, he actually had to stop and figure it out.

I have to ask you: How hard IS this????

G-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-H!!!!!!!!!!

Blue Car reappears at Maryland, apparently having dodged Red Car at Seventh and Maryland (or maybe shot the bastard, who knows?). He turns north and darts out of sight at a high rate of speed.

Sheeple finally leads us across Bethany Home, where Fifteenth widens enough for me to charge around him.

I will refrain from describing the stupid stuff at the Costco filling station, lest I bite one of the dogs in remembered rage.

Finally escaping from Costco, I head east on Bethany Home trying to get north (leftward bound) on Seventh.

But shit NO! As is the usual case on Phoenix’s fine road system, wherever you’re going, you can’t get there from here.

Ahead, I spot a traffic jam backed up at a no-left-turn sign. Luckily I’m already in the left lane, and so can swerve across the oncoming traffic and alight in a neighborhood.

Traversing a spaghetti-dish of winding roads, I make my way northerly and easterly, around to Seventh. The construction at Bethany is holding up the traffic so I have no problem jerking left out of the neighborhood across three traffic lanes. What could go wrong?

Nothing, for a change.

Finally make it home.

Any question why my blood pressure hovers near the stratosphere?

This is typical. You can not go out on the roads in this damn city without running into this kind of sh!t. Every time.

Today I had four simple errands:

  • Make a run on the Fry’s at Tatum & Shea, therein to search for (and of course not find) some items left wanting by my usual hangouts.
  • Stop on the way home at Home Depot, there to buy the spring vegetable seeds that, yea verily, were not available in the Fry’s nursery section.
  • Drop down to Seventh Street & Glendale to pick up a bucket of granulated chlorine for the pool.
  • Cruise across to 7th, jog south and west to Costco, fill up the gas tank.

Thence, go home, a straight shot (literally…) up 7th Avenue.

These are not difficult things to accomplish, eh? The roads, all of them three lanes in each direction (with a center left-turn-crazy lane, giving you seven lanes per thoroughfare), move smoothly under the influence of intelligently timed lights. None of these four stops requires a left turn into a parking lot. Should be easy, wouldn’t you think?

How hard can  this be?

Very. That’s how.

Because the antics described herein are fucking standard operating practice. This is simply the way people drive here. It is a screaming madhouse out there.

If my son didn’t live here in town, I would move out of this ugly, batsh!t crazy city so fast it would make your head spin.

Wanting to retire in Arizona? Make your home in Prescott. Whatever you do, do not do not do not move to Phoenix. Or to Tucson, which is even worse.

 

 

 

 

The Elevator Escapade

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So a couple of readers have asked for some elucidation of a remark I made in passing, alluding to an eleven-story drop in the cab on a passenger elevator. So herewith: The Elevator Escapade.

I was just a poor girl
Though my story’s amply told…

The year is about 1966. I’m answering phones in a law office for a living, too damn dumb to know any better so having a pretty good time with life. The firm occupied three stories at the top of the (now defunct) Transamerica Title Building, smack in the middle of decrepit beautiful downtown Phoenix. So my station — we had four receptionists’ stations, each with rotating systems that could handle 12 calls at once — was on the 13th floor (wouldn’tcha know it).

One day I got off for some excuse and went out to go to lunch or some such. Got on the elevator and proceeded toward the ground floor and the fine greasy spoons and department stores that waited on the streets of downtown Phoenix. Two or three youngish men get on with me. I believe, in retrospect, that they’re clients, because I would remember if they’d been the firm’s associates, clerks, or partners.

We press “1” on the panel and watch the doors close. The elevator starts down and then…it accelerates like a rocket caught in the gravity of the planet. Which, of course, is exactly what it was. A rocket caught in the gravity of the planet.

The pack of us kind of stand there, none of us saying anything or moving: like, This isn’t really happening, is it? Tell us this isn’t happening…

I’m standing closest to the control panel. None of the men budges.

I study the controls and can’t figure them out. There’s no “STOP THIS DAMN ROCKET” or “ABORT ABORT ABORT” button. But there’s an emergency call button. So I say, “You think I should press this one?”

One of the men says, “Yeah. I think you should.”

I jam my dainty finger in it, privately wondering which of the rest of them to push if this doesn’t do anything. All of them, I figure…

But, mirabilis, it does work.

In those days, Otis elevators were equipped with these prongs that wrapped under the carriage. In case of free-fall, they were supposed to SPROING out and slam into these slots in the wall, thereby whanging the elevator to a proverbial screeching halt.

When I hit the “emergency alarm” button, that released our prongs and jammed the cab to a stop.

We managed to prize the doors open and climbed out onto the second floor.

We had fallen eleven stories. Only three more stories to go before we hit the basement floor.

And that is why any day, I’d rather climb a few flights of stairs than ride an elevator.

Up the Hill Again…and back

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Ugh. Doing this little climb every morning for the next eight days is going to be a challenge. Not because I can’t do it but because, as usual, I don’t wanna do it. 😀 And because as also usual there are a zillion other things I’d rather be doing. Loafing, for example.

Got a late start yesterday, having foolishly turned on the computer to check email and take a “quick” look at the Internet: always a mistake. By the time I got out of the house, the sun was fully risen, rush-hour traffic was in progress, and I could not find a place to park at the trailhead. So to my intense annoyance I had to turn around, head back down annoying 7th Street to the “Visitor Center,” which because of its entrance off a high-speed major thoroughfare is tricky to get into and tricky to get out of. A boondoggle of recent construction, this fine facility at least has enough parking, most days.

But it’s about 3/4 of a mile from the trailhead — maybe more than that, given that that the trail there winds a little. So that added about a mile and a half to the hike. Pile on the mini-heat wave we were supposed to have on Tuesday, and I was not a happy camperette.

I started out in hummingbird mode — hummingbirds being creatures given to constant rage — and continued pretty much in the same vein. That did not help my attitude about this project, which is, shall we say, jaundiced.

Women who hike for fitness like to bring a friend, and they like to yak. Apparently most women have no clue how far the female voice carries across the desert. Two women babbling at each other can be heard a good half-mile away.

Which might be OK if they had anything interesting to say. They don’t. Hiking, slenderizing women talk about three subjects and only three subjects: their diets, their friends (or roommates), and the office. That’s it. Apparently they think of nothing else. So not only is the chatter of their voices annoying, the fact that they have fuckin’ nothing to say is equally irritating.

Then we have the manners characteristic of the hordes that run up and down the Phoenix Mountains.

You know… A hiker coming downhill customarily has the right of way on a trail. This is because momentum makes it harder for a person walking downhill to stop, especially if — as in the Phoenix Mountain parks — the trails are rocky and littered with roller-bearing stones. If you meet someone coming down as you’re going up a narrow trail, you’re supposed to step to one side to let that person get by. The reason is obvious, if you have ever walked either up or down a rocky mountain trail.

But bear in mind that the trail in question is not narrow. It’s a good fifteen or twenty feet wide — it used to be a road for automobiles, and still bears some of the asphalt laid, decades ago, for that purpose.

The  broad thoroughfare that goes all the way up Shaw Butte is so heavily thumped with daily hiking and mountain-bike traffic that there are two traces cleared of roller-bearing scree all the way from the trailhead to the top. In many places, there are three of them. So, if you see someone coming down at you or if you come up behind someone walking slower than you’re going, the logical (polite…) thing to do is to step one or two paces to the left or the right and go around them on the adjacent trace.

But that’s not what these bitches do.

They come up behind you, yakking blithely all the way, and they tailgate you! They come right up your ass and tromp along at your heels. So you have to step aside, stop, and let them pass.

Or, if they see you coming downhill and they’re climbing up below you, they step into the trace you’re using and dare you to keep walking.

You understand: there’s no point in this. With two and sometimes three traces of beaten path — relatively free of loose stones and small outcroppings — there’s no reason to insist on getting in someone else’s way.

Yesterday morning, I took one pair of them up on the dare. Admittedly, one of them was a guy. But he also was an airhead. These trails are populated with airheads. Believe me.

So I’m headed downhill on one of two parallel traces on this wide trail. This guy and his woman are coming up. I see them. They see me. It is obvious that they see me, from a fair distance away. So they march into the trace that I’m coming down on and proceed uphill straight at me.

I think, f*ck you, and just keep on walking.

We are practically bellybutton-to-bellybutton before the oaf steps aside.

Meanwhile, because I’ve made a late start, the sun is well up over the nearby mountains, and so it quickly gets passing warm on the trail. Fortunately I’ve brought plenty of water and dressed in layers. But that notwithstanding, by the time I got about 2/3 of the way to the top, I was damned hot.

I do not like being damned hot. That is why I usually have enough sense to leave the house before sunrise…

Then we have the view. The trail up North Mountain is best described in one word: boring. It is a boring trail devoid of most wildlife, which has been scared off by the hordes of device-connected, “music”-jangling, yammering humanity. The view off the side of the trail is just plain ugly.

Phoenix sprawls to the north — way to the north now — of the Mountain Preserves. What spreads out below you is mile on mile on mile of elbow-to-elbow ticky-tacky developments, commercial strips, and industrial slum. A huge high school looms in the near distance: it looks exactly like a prison. Even on a clear, relatively low-smog day, it is a dreary view.

Just below the top, I paused to swig a swallow of water. An older man also paused on the point and said hello. I said I sure was glad I was born 50 years too soon to go to a school that looks like a jail. He laughed and said, “Me, too!”

So I need to find some other hiking venues. This morning I probably will go to the flats behind North Mountain. Absent the rather precarious climb I’ve described before, the area really doesn’t have a good place to trot up and down hills. But you can walk from Peoria Ave. to Thunderbird, which is about 1.8 miles. Trails allow for a wandering path, and two of them will take you up low rises. So if a person walks at a fast clip, she presumably can get at least a little bit of a workout. Better than sitting in front of a computer, anyway.

Today I have to meet some friends for lunch at 11:30, so will need to get in some pass at exercising and still have time to get home, get cleaned up, paint my face, and get dressed. Since I didn’t get home from yesterday’s junket until almost 10 a.m., I need to go someplace closer, easier to park, and faster to walk.

Enough is enough…and I’ve barely begun!

 

Another Fine Day in the ‘Hood…Another “Fine” Apple Product

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Y’know, just once it would be nice to sit outside on a beautiful afternoon and not have one’s loafing interrupted by a police chase.

Talk about your forlorn hopes… 😉

This afternoon I ensconce myself on the back porch, put my feet up on a chair and the computer on my lap, and start pasting and formatting chapters 2 and 3 of Ella’s Story into the Plain & Simple Press website.

And, by dayum! before I can even format the first heading, along come not one, not two, but THREE cop and TV helicopters. As it develops, a band of armed robbers committed some crime on the far west side. One of them made his way into east Phoenix (so we’re told) and hijacked a woman’s car. When the cops threw down a bunch of tire-busters, he jumped out and hijacked another woman’s pickup.

From there he led the cops on a merry chase, ultimately running up Conduit of Blight Blvd, across Gangbanger’s Way and into SunnySlop, where he abandoned the truck and ran into his mom and dad’s miserable slum apartment. They caught the poor schmuck, but not before considerable property damage was done, large numbers of taxpayer dollars were expended, and an abrupt end was brought to anything resembling peace and quiet.

It gets tiresome. Once again I had to pack up everything, call the dogs inside, lock up all the doors, and forget any silly ideas about enjoying my backyard.

Speaking of silly ideas, remember that great Apple slogan, “It just works”?

Have you noticed how they’ve stopped using that?

Presumably because the operative phrase is now “It just doesn’t work.” And lest you think that is not a widespread phenomenon: it is Tuesday afternoon just now. The SOONEST I can get this practically brand-new MacBook in to the purported “Geniuses” to see if they can and will fix it is 4:15 — the height of rush hour — next Friday afternoon!

The key for the B character has stopped working. The only way I can type a letter “B” is by copying and pasting it.

Look this up on the Web and discover it’s a known issue that’s been happening since 2016!

How long do you suppose it takes Apple to fix a thing like this?

My other two Macs are upwards of nine years old, and they’ve never had a key just stop working.

uying Purchasing this pricey little bastard was a big mistake. Clearly, it was time to go back to the PC, with all its equally annoying headaches. At least a PC is relatively cheap — when it craps out you can go buy a new one.

The magically self-disabling “b” is not the only irritant with this keyboard. The keys are slightly larger and slightly further apart than they were on earlier models. Result: every third time a finger reaches for a key, it either hits the wrong key or it hits two keys. This means what once used to be a fast, accurate typing style now produces a mish-mash of typos: to wit, gobbledy-gook.

Looks like it’s time to go out and get an inexpensive PC from Costco and re-learn Windows. Then figure out how to get all the MacData into Windows format — shouldn’t be hard, because every file that matters was produced in Office programs, and they’re all stashed on DropBox. But it will add to the endless hassle factor.

Endlessly.

Copy, Paste….B b

I need another hole in my head….

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So along about 11:00 a.m., having organized this year’s mountain of tax papers, I stroll across the street to WonderAccountant’s place, there to deliver the trash. As I stroll down the driveway, I hear a woman shrieking, truly screaming in terror. Drop the papers on WA’s doorstep, holler at her to call the cops, and start to run in the direction of the yelling. By the time I get down to the house where I think it’s coming from, it’s stopped. I can’t find anyone around, so stand down.

While WonderAccountant and I are waiting for the cops to show up (they never do…) we see the Perp stalk out of Other Daughter’s house, jump in his car, and drive away. We realize the screaming was very likely coming from OD’s: WonderAccountant has noticed before that conversation taking place in OD’s yard bounces off house walls on the other side of the street and sounds like they’re right in her or Joel’s  front yard.

We debate whether to add this to our report to 911 but figure since he saw us standing out there, he’ll know where that came from. If (we’re still thinking, mistakenly, when) we see a cop, we’ll casually mention that they might want to check on her welfare, without commenting on the abusive father.

OD told another neighbor that when her sister, Pretty Daughter, was advanced in pregnancy, he socked her smack in the gut with his fist. Said he used to beat both girls and their mother when they were kids. It’s believable: he really is a beaut. But then: she’s certified nuts, too…evidently for a reason.

So there I am in the driveway waving good-bye to the plumber, who shows up half-an hour before the 1-to-3 slot he reserved, and thinking…God Dayum, I do need that German shepherd back.

Anna. She did quite the little number on the Perp’s schizophrenic accomplice, Son-in-Law (he who no longer lives with Other Daughter). SiL tried, apparently during a phase when his meds weren’t working, tried to get into my backyard through the side gate, while a friend and I were sitting on the side deck. He managed to escape (luckily he’d parked his car in front) before she could catch him, but I’ll tellya…he never came back here again. Scared the bedoodles out of him.

As for the Perp himself: she could’ve taken that aging sleaze out in about three seconds flat.

Sometimes I think I need to get another German shepherd.

Right. Just what I need: another hole in the head.

If I’d had Anna at hand this noon, I would’ve gone down to O.D.’s place to see if she was OK.

Right.

Today’s Day from Hell started yesterday morning, when I managed to clog up the main bathroom’s toilet. It being Sunday, that meant I had to make do until today, when the plumber could send his son to clear out the pipes.

This morning, during a visit from yet another Cox technician, we learned that Cox’s shitty equipment just doesn’t work at all with the VSR Call Blocker 5000, which is damned annoying.

After 309 intercepts, most of the robocallers have given up. It’s been relatively quiet around here the past few days, with the device disconnected.

They’ll be back in due time, of course. At that point, I’ll either switch the phones to Ooma and NoMoRobo (as I should have done at the outset) or deep-six the landlines and replace them with a few cell phones. I figure I can get a real cell phone — an actual smartphone, now that one of my friends has volunteered to teach me to use it — and then acquire a few ultra-cheap clamshells with prepaid minutes to set around the house for emergency use. These can just be left turned off, and the proposed smartphone can take my present phone number.

Last night at about 12:15 a.m. (that actually would be this morning, wouldn’t it?), Firefox (!!! Firefox!) crashed with a resounding roar. In doing so, it took down a website I’d been working on half the day, losing about two hours’ worth of coding. I hate coding. I hate coding even more than I hate grading freshman comp papers. And that is a lot. And yes. Yes, the page was saved. Do you really think I don’t hit “Save” about every thirty seconds, after all my fun escapades in Computer Science?

So spent two hours this morning reconstructing the disappeared content and design. Good morning, fuckin’ America!

In the Hole in the Head Department, y’know what I really think I should do?

I think I should give over all pretense of doing anything that in any way looks like work. Toss a couple pair of jeans, a few shirts, a jacket, the camp stove, the dwarf dogs, and a sleeping bag in the car and just…start…driving.

And never. come. back.

Wining Time

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Time to sit down and swill a nice glass of Kirkland’s best.

The days swirl past like water flowing down the drain. And at this age…well, that’s a pretty apt metaphor. It’s been a very busy few hundred hours of late, some of them fun and some of them not so much.

Today started out pretty fun: A special choir session in the morning, in which we got some extra-special coaching from our professional musicians, met some new choir members, and had ourselves sorted out by timbre and reseated here, there and yon.

Even though one must yodel all by oneself, in public before an audience that does include the aforementioned professional musicians, I always get a kick out this process. It usually results in a set of new seating companions, which is cool because it allows me to get to know more choir members…otherwise, being the recluse that I am, I would cling to the few friends I’ve made and never get to know anyone else. So this is good. One of my favorite Chamber Choir singers is now seated to my right, a lovely singer with a wonderful, effervescent personality who seems, unlike moi, to be afraid of nothing and no one. To the left, a quiet woman who has been around for awhile but whom I’ve never had (or made…) an opportunity to come to know. AND we’re right down in front, meaning no climbing up and down and balancing on bleacher-like things. It’ll be a little harder to see the director from the new vantage point — and that is something I rely on simply because I’m just not that experienced, as singers go. But I think as long as we’re standing, it’ll be OK.

Yesterday was a bitch, as it developed.

Last night we finally moved the current wave of copy back to our journal editor. But not without a fiasco of the first water.

Working on revamping the Plain & Simple Press website and not making much headway, I’m figuring it’s about time to knock off and go do the day’s required fucking blood pressure test. This is the best time of day, when the numbers are at their lowest ebb…and that is a desideratum, because we wish to keep Cardiodoc at bay. I’ve not yet taken a pill, but it’s about time because part of the gaming of the system entails dropping one of these minuscule doses, waiting about an hour, and then running the hated gadget. This results — well, unless the ambient temperature is in the low 60s, as it can be — in a fine set of numbers in the mid- to low 110s.

Impressive. Very impressive. If that doesn’t get the guy off my neck, nothing will. 😀

Just as I’m thinking Get up, lady, and drop a pill, in comes a message from The Kid: where is Essay 4?

Essay 4? It’s on DropBox, in the Essay 4 folder. Of course (just unwittingly typed that “of curse”). Where we put it several days ago, and happy we were, indeed, to see the end of that fine document.

You understand: some of these authors are using their gilded efforts for P&T (promotion and tenure reviews). In its current incarnation, the journal seems to be absent anyone who even vaguely resembles a peer reviewer, nor does the copy seem to have benefited from the advice of an editor who is, shall we say, gifted with a jaundiced eye. The new editor appears to be inexperienced with wrangling creatives or unwilling to ride herd on the livestock. Articles are difficult to read primarily because they’re far from ready to go to press.

That is about the mildest I can get on this subject. And yes. I do remember my mother inveighing about “if you can’t say anything nice…” You can’t.

No, says The Kid. It is not on DropBox. Where is it?

Where, indeed? WhereTF? I search DropBox: and I know that is where I stored it because I no longer stash this stuff on my local disk. DropBox has a back-up/restore function, and supposedly Time Machine is also backing up DropBox.

She’s right. It’s gone. I search “All Documents” on my MacBook.

Not there.

WTF?

I fly to the big computer, fire up Time Machine, and search directories going back a week.

Not there.

By now, I am seriously freaking out.

I break into DropBox’s website, parse my way through the nightmarish techno-instructions, and search DB’s back-ups.

Not there.

Holy CRAP! This file, which was utter diabolical torture to read, is flat-out fucking GONE.

I email The Kid and tell her I’ll have to plow through the whole.god.AWFUL.thirty.god.DAMNED.pages again, which will take another full (agonizing) day.

So I go to open the hideous unedited original in Wyrd. Of course, when you open Word it proposes to “Open Recent.”

Hmmm….  No sign of the missing files in “Open Recent.” But what do we have at the bottom of the “Recent” list but a MORE tag….ah, yes.

Click on that. Select “this week.” Wait for some unholy number of files to register in Wyrd’s memory.

And lo!

There the little bastards are!

W-H-A-A-A-T??

W-H-E-R-E??????

The things are stored in a folder — that would be a “directory” for grown-ups who use Microsoft Windows — with a title that is a long, arcane number: D123455432211 or some damfool thing. Both of them: the clean edited copy and the marked-up copy.

WTF is D123455432211????

Not caring much until I can contrive to open the things and then save up to DropBox, I stash the files, open them, and confirm that yes, they are the edited and clean versions. These, I mail to The Kid and to myself, by way of ensuring that they will not get “disappeared” again.

Whatever a D123455432211 is, I’ve never seen anything like it. Search the Internet. Whatever terms I dreamed up, at this moment I do not recall…but something that I typed into Google called up the answer. As it develops, when someone sends you a MacMail attachment and you open the damn thing, MacMail will save it into a “Downloads” folder. It does not prompt you to save the file where you want it to go. It just quietly saves in some un-findable location where Apple wants it to go. To make it even more un-findable, MacMail will designate this folder with a zillion-character numeric title.

By the time our author’s fine piece of literature has resurfaced, I am simply beside myself with rage, frustration, and horror.

Not only have I neglected to run the damn blood pressure machine, by now I’m about 5 hours late in taking the hated anti-hypertension pill. Along about 11 p.m. I gulp down the drug and test the BP. Really, it’s not that high: in the 130s. One figure is in the dramatically high 130s; the rest are in the middle range. The last time I flew into a state of Extreme High Dudgeon, the gauge reached 165/105, presumably in the bust a blood-vein category.

Unfortunately, in the brave new world of the American Heart Association, anything above 129 is now regarded as “high blood pressure.”

Questionable though I suspect that to be, nevertheless Cardiodoc takes it as received wisdom from Rome. So sticking those numbers in the record is contraindicated.

This evening they’re back down into the 110s. Those, we keep.

I hate computers.

That notwithstanding, I’ve spent a fair amount of today rebuilding the Plain & Simple Press site so that I can offer content from two completed books and one work in progress for free to readers.

This required a refresher course in rudimentary coding. Needed to figure out how to build an internal link in a web page. You understand: once, back in the dark ages, I knew how to do this. That was when my mind was young and elastic. Today: phbphphbhphphbbbt! I do not want to know it and so I have forgotten all that arcana.

Okay. I now know how to do it. Again. Probably will not remember until tomorrow. But for the nonce, code that can be self-plagiarized is installed in one of the new pages under construction.

I should take the dogs for a walk, it being not even 8 p.m. Exercise is needed for dogs and for human. But…

One is given pause.

An admired friend of mine, one of the most elegant European women I have ever met, lives within walking distance, in a tiny development of patio homes that fronts right on Central Avenue. This is within easy walking distance of the Funny Farm.

She reports that a couple nights ago someone came to her door about 9:00 p.m., rousting her from whatever she was doing and alerting her German shepherd. Fortunately she has a steel security door.

When she opened her front door, she found a guy on the other side of that security door foaming obscenities at the mouth and waving a gun around. He was in some kind of rage, he was trying to get in, and he threatened to shoot her.

She being a woman of some self-possession kept her cool, closed the door on him, and called the cops. He was gone by the time the gendarmes showed up. But as you can imagine, she was somewhat alarmed.

She speculated that he was a transient, as he was dirty and probably high on the usual drug of choice in our parts — meth.

Mmm hmm.

Well, I walk these dogs at night all the time, partly because in the summer it’s the only time they can walk on the hot pavement and partly because I’m busy from dawn to well after dusk. I never see anyone — sketchy or otherwise — wandering around after dark here. The bums are sleeping in the alleys, and the residents are nailed to their TV sets.

But just now I think…maybe not.

If there’s some drug-addled animal out there waving his gun around and threatening elderly women, I really do not want to meet him at night. Not in the daytime, either, but especially not at night. My gun is heavy and I do not even know where my father’s holster is stashed. Nor do I especially fancy the prospect of keeping two wackshit dogs under control while I try to defend myself against a wackshit human.

And so, to pour another glass of wine.

Prosit!